Fulham fans- who can see what one of their own makes of our clash on Sunday at this link – have every reason to be celebrating last night’s admirable display in the Europa League. We naturally hope they will be less pleased with life after the start of Sunderland’s make-or-break phase of the season …
Villa’s cup run means we now have four homes games in which to turn our season round – or sink..
Fulham, Bolton, Man City and Birmingham: each should be winnable, two of them – the first two – should be bankable.
But we are Sunderland fans. We know the score. What tally would satisfy you, and what would plunge you into deep gloom?
Jim kicked things off at the Blackcats e-mail loop with this:
Villa going through last night means our game there is off now, so we’ve got 4 home games on the bounce: Fulham (useless away); Bolton (just useless); City (increasingly looking useless); and Birmingham (after a brief interlude of what almost passed for quality, now back to being useless).
We could not ask for a better chance to stop being useless ourselves and pick up some wins in this period.
My reponse was this:
I am trying to work myself up into a state of reasonable optimism. Realistically, what wd settle for? If be pleased with 9 pts, seriously depressed by fewer than 7
I strongly believe we have to get things started with a win against Fulham on Sunday. The boost in confidence would be priceless.
What do others think?
Colin Randall
>>>>>>STOP PRESS>>>>>Some fantastic news just in I have just read Kenwyn Jones comments after the Fulham game and the fantastic news is… and I quote “We are going to try harder for the Bolton game” we can all sleep soundly in our beds now folks, the Messiah has arrived!!!
Sunderland 0…Fulham 0 Well lads we’ve got the first of our 3 points from 4 games today after another rubbish showing, however we must not worry as it’s all down to everything but the players fault, and the even better news is all the players wages went into their bank accounts again this week with no problems at all so all in all a fabulous week for all concerned at Sunderland F.C. gosh isn’t it great being a footballer?.
Four points max, but realistically 3, made up of draws against 3 out of the four games permed anyway you want. But don’t worry because Steve Bruce will have a great excuse, after every game it will be all down to the injury bug again. So that’s all right then for a minute i thought they just didn’t try and actually weren’t good enough.
Clearly I meant “move up the table”, as opposed to “down”. My fingers involutanrily move to write abject and disappointing sentences it seems.
Curse no edit button! Aplogies for the double post.
I won’t lie to you, I’m expecting only five points from this run of matches, including a win in there and nothing from the Manchester City game.
Quite frankly I’ll be happy with that if it means we put some distance into the current three point advantage we hold over the drop zone and even moreso if it means we actually move down the table instead of continuing our form of dropping like a stone.
A win against Bolton with draws against Fulham and Birmingham and a loss against Man City is my prediction. Although if we scored 3 past Man City last time surely there’s actually nothing to be afraid of?
I watched Fulham on TV last night against Shakthar Donetsk. It was a great result for them and very much down to superb organistaion and concentration. Haageland and Hughes were outstanding and although the midfield was struggling against opponents who just ran and ran at them, they never lost their shape. It shows what an outstanding manager Roy Hodgson is and how decent players can become good ones with the right levels of encouragement.
Hopefully, they will have had a monumental p*** up on the way back and will still be suffering from hangovers on Sunday. They defended brilliantly against a team made up of good Brazilians and good Europeans. Now they have to face us and our malfunctioning midfield and shaky back four.
Optimistic? You decide.